SUMMER of MESA (2020) & SUMMER AFTER (2022)
Summer of Mesa is a 2020 coming-of-age romantic drama film written and directed by Josh Cox who was 20 years old during the shoot. Set in 1985 on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, it stars Molly Miles, Andrea Granera, and Alec Bandzes. The story chronicles the romantic relationship between 16-year-old Lily, and Mesa, a girl her age who she meets on the peninsula
Wikipedia Summer of Mesa (2020) - IMDb 5'5
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LINK https://youtu.be/9Ma4Zqt_el8
The Quiet Brilliance of Josh Cox and the World of Summer of Mesa
What astonishes me about Summer of Mesa isn’t simply that it was made by a 20‑year‑old. It’s that the film carries the calm confidence of someone who has already lived a lifetime inside cinema. Josh Cox shot the entire feature for $400, using a Panasonic GH4, a modest mirrorless camera most filmmakers treat as an entry‑level tool. Yet the result feels flawless: sun‑bleached, tender, and aesthetically beautiful in a way that doesn’t strain for effect. It just exists, like a memory you suddenly remember in full color.
My admiration for Cox is beyond words. There’s something almost disarming about a filmmaker this young creating something this assured. He found his voice before he could legally rent a car.
Cox’s biography reads like the blueprint of a micro‑budget prodigy. He grew up experimenting with images, teaching himself camera movement, editing, and color through instinct rather than formal training. When he began Summer of Mesa, he didn’t assemble a crew — he was the crew. Director, cinematographer, editor, producer. Six days of shooting on Cape Cod, almost entirely with natural light, and a visual language that feels more like a diary than a production.
One of the film’s quiet miracles is the casting. Cox didn’t hold traditional auditions. He chose actors through conversations, looking for presence, softness, and emotional openness rather than technique. That’s why the performances feel so unforced. The characters don’t seem acted; they seem lived. The chemistry between Lily and Mesa isn’t manufactured — it’s discovered.
What makes Cox compelling is that he doesn’t chase scale. He chases intimacy. His frames are quiet, his pacing patient, his emotional beats unhurried. There’s a pastel realism to his images — a kind of gentle observational gaze — that many directors spend decades trying to find. He found it before he could legally rent a car.
As for his future, the signs point toward a filmmaker who will continue working outside the traditional system, building stories the way painters build canvases: slowly, personally, with total authorship. He has already announced a follow‑up set in the same emotional universe, suggesting he’s not done exploring the fragile, luminous spaces where adolescence and desire meet. If Summer of Mesa is his first whisper, the next films may be where he learns to speak in full voice.
For now, it’s enough to say this: Josh Cox didn’t just make a film at twenty. He made a film with a soul — and that kind of beginning tends to lead somewhere remarkable.
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